Richard said:
Narrowly, was it?
Sorry, someone seems to have missed England's utter domination of the final 4 Tests.
While England clearly had the better of the final four test matches, "utter domination" is a ridiculous description. The only one of the four tests that England utterly dominated was the Old Trafford test, where only Ponting prevented them from winning. At Edgbaston the final margin was 2 runs, without a declaration from England, which obviously shows it was a close test. Yes, England dominated the early stages of the test (as they did in all the middle three), but they fell away quite badly and if it wasn't for Flintoff's huge effort with bat and ball on day 3 they almost certainly would have lost.
At Trent Bridge, Australia followed on, but set a tricky target which England had a fair amount of trouble making. It wasn't as close as the second and third tests, but it wasn't a case of domination either, at least not after the end of Australia's first innings.
The Oval was an even test match, and before bad light and rain changed the course of events Australia was probably on top. Indeed, even after the bad light and into the final day an Australian victory was quite plausible and may well have happened if it wasn't for Pietersen's innings, whereas an England win by that point of the game was out of the question.
The 2005 Ashes was one of the closest series in memory, and all of the matches aside from Lords and Old Trafford could have gone either way right up towards the very end. The 2002/03 Ashes was "utter domination", the 2005 Ashes was a close series where one team had the better of the last four tests and were deserved winners. There's a big difference, and for Jones to come out and claim that England were the best in the world (if he did in fact do that) after it is pretty silly, especially comparing the records of the two sides since.